The book “Public Relations Writing & Media Techniques” by Dennis L. Wilcock defines an infographic as, “computer-generated artwork that attractively displays simple tables and charts.” When I think of infographics, I think of a graph or chart that uses interesting images or bright colors to present data to readers. They essentially make something that is normally comprised of black and white numbers and lines interesting by adding something that is pleasing to the eye.

Normally, when I think of graphs I think of math class in high school or the stock market, both things that are not exactly passions of mine. However, I’ve learned that graphics can be made fun by using your subject matter and interpreting it as art for the graph or chart. For example, when using a pie graph to display what kind of pizza different people like in a pizza parlor, you could make the pieces of the graph look like an actual pizza with the different kinds of toppings (i.e.: one piece with just cheese, one with pepperoni, one with mushrooms, and so on).

However, infographics can be used in more than just the obvious ways. You might want to have your chart of graph popping out of an object that represents something about your statistics, or gives an overall theme to the graphic. The bottom line is that no matter what you do to your information, a little color always helps. Presenting a plain graph made with little to no creativity does not reflect well on you or whoever you’re representing. Get inspiration from different sources, including your co-workers, and you can make an infographic that gets printed in a publication!

This graphic does not show real data, but it is something that hopefully will be true one day of my current “client” for my PR class, the Pre-Health Service Organization at Southeastern University: